In this Book
- Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of Arizona Press
summary
“Duality” is at the center of Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet, a striking collection of poems both intimate and grand. The poet, Dixie Salazar, has spent a lifetime forging her own identity out of two cultures: “On one side was my father’s world: Spanish speaking from las montañas. On the other side was my mother’s world: a deep Southern drawl wafting from the magnolia and chinaberry trees.” As her poems reveal, she is a product of both cultures but not completely at home in either one.
In the two sections of the book—“Inside” and “Outside”—parallelism and symmetry interact with themes both public and private. Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet presents thirty-nine poems in free verse and traditional poetic forms, especially the sonnet and adaptations of the sonnet. The sonnet—usually consisting of the octet (eight lines) that sets up the main idea of the poem and the sestet (six lines) that resolves, answers or completes the poem—is a natural form for a poet whose identity is divided. Double sonnets and “double-linked sonnets doubled” reflect the duality the poet feels inside her skin. And the poems written to and for a “lost sister” reinforce the theme.
Throughout this provocative book, Salazar navigates the alienation of her cultural in-between-ness. By the end, she appears to become more comfortable with her status of “outsider,” deciding that she doesn’t need to give in to pressures to pick a side or to accept others’ ideas of where her own “borders” begin or end.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Part I: Inside
- Half and Half
- pp. 3-4
- Subjunctive Mood
- pp. 5-8
- Spelling It Out
- pp. 9-10
- Stolen Names
- pp. 11-13
- You Could Say
- pp. 17-20
- Nothing Para Nada
- pp. 21-22
- Dancing with the Skeletons
- pp. 33-37
- Davy Crockett Meets Coronado
- pp. 38-41
- Cornbread y Caracoles en Cielo
- pp. 42-43
- Blue Waltz Perfume
- pp. 44-46
- You Were There
- pp. 48-53
- The Recipe
- pp. 54-57
- Beach Walking with the Stones
- pp. 58-60
- Part II: Outside
- Cayucos Fog
- p. 63
- America's Most Wanted
- pp. 65-67
- Conductor's Lament
- p. 68
- Art Lesson with the Hearing-Impaired
- pp. 69-71
- Smoke Signals
- p. 72
- Pruning Roses at Corcoran Prison
- pp. 73-74
- Virgin Behind Security Bars
- pp. 75-76
- Overtime at the Paul Revere Motel
- pp. 86-87
- Muscatel Sonnet
- p. 88
- Fiber-optic Angel
- pp. 91-92
- Fixed-Income Sonnet
- p. 97
- Yard Sale in the Fog
- pp. 98-99
- Dusty Footsteps
- pp. 100-102
- What's Amazing about Grace
- pp. 103-104
- Long Ago the Same
- pp. 107-108
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816503162
Related ISBN(s)
9780816528516
MARC Record
OCLC
754718534
Pages
119
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2010